Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand-new chapter for Declaration of Death, #10: Creators of Compassion. On schedule as promised, an update! Three cheers for actually sticking to it for once, hallelujah! This intro marks five out of six, so holy smokes we are just one chapter away from the entire cast being revealed, and I am extremely excited about that. Last chapter, you met Naia Marsay from District 4, Roark Barlowe from District 9, Anneke Van Acker from District 12, and Cerberus Arkwright from District 2, who I hope you all enjoyed getting to meet.
This chapter is the second of three train ride intros, where you shall meet: Conrad Culler (D11M by Reign of Winter), Veryn Alenti (D5F by ladyqueerfoot), Tauren Anatole (D3M by daydreamer26), and Ness Turner (D8F by LiveFreeOrDie). As I've been saying for every swell of characters, this quartet is another great group of tributes, and we're just one step closer to the Pre-Games, which I just adore.
As always, thank you for your patience and support. Please enjoy, Chapter #10: Creators of Compassion.
"Compassion is to look beyond your own pain, to see the pain of others," ~ Yasmin Mogahed
Conrad Culler: District 11 Male P.O.V (18)
"Are you going to say something or just look at the acne on the back of my neck?" Conrad Culler asks without looking up from the buffet of food laid out in front of him. He digs his fingers into a freshly baked biscuit, peeling the top layer off as the warmth slides over his skin. He doesn't turn back to look at her, at his district partner, for the feeling of a stare with the ire of a thousand suns has burned a hole the size of a quarter through the small of his back. He flicks a few pieces of the biscuit into the trash can, this time opting to face Azalea Oleander and stare her in the face. "If you frown any harder, your eyebrows might just get sewn together."
"Shut up, Culler," Azalea hisses, sitting with her legs crossed over the other at the dining room table. "And don't talk to me about my eyebrows." Conrad stills in his movements to reach his seat, as Azalea's grip on the knife in her hand tightens. It's either about to slice into his throat or cut into the rib-eye that she piles on her plate. Either way, something red will spill on fine China. "Not when yours look like caterpillar worms."
Well, he'll give that one to her. It's better to know when to lose a fight versus trying to keep one up. Conrad takes a seat opposite her, and their escort, Marlon Caynes with his sea-blue hair looks like he'd rather be sitting anywhere else on the train. If fists were to start flying, Conrad isn't sure the Capitolite is willing to ruin his clearly expensive hairdo over tributes from Eleven.
It is rather surreal, and perhaps not in the best ways, for Conrad. Just this morning he's straightening the sheets on his bed, where there's always one corner that billows and bulks too much for his liking on the left corner, and now… twelve hours later, he's fine dining on a one-way ticket to hell. And, apparently, with the devil glaring at him from across the placemats.
Conrad is used to the glares and stares, and if it is any reason as to why Azalea spits into her hand at the reaping, he's got a good idea as to why; it's the same reason everyone screams at him, throwing jeers at his office cubicle, or when people would leave hastily written – and sloppy, always sloppy – notes tacked to his front door. All Conrad has to do is grin, shake someone's hand, give a deferential apology, and then he's on his way, lucky to never see them again.
Azalea Oleander will not give up that easy, he figures.
Marlon swirls the glass of wine nestled in his hands, suppling a small frown on his face. "If this is how you'll treat potential allies in the arena, don't be surprised when people refuse your offers."
"Oh, shut it," Azalea turns her venom towards their escort, scowling as she pierces a green bean with her fork. "You'd hate him too, if you know what he did," she lifts her gaze up from the plate, a cold glare piercing straight through Conrad's chest. A flue of ice seizes his arms, Conrad lowering them from the table and into his lap. "What he does."
"And what would that be, Conrad?" Marlon asks. The escort's voice sounds genuinely curious, causing Conrad's brow to quirk. He writes the man off hastily on his first appearance last year as a simpleton, an airhead, and while he is usually not that forward with his insults, he almost couldn't hold them back.
Conrad opens his mouth to answer, pausing midbite of the piece of lamb chop on his plate. He finishes swallowing, mouth hanging open to give a response, yet he doesn't speak. Years have gone by, and Conrad Culler still watches his words. It doesn't take much, as he's found out in the year and a half after the rebellion is over, for people to twist their words against others, and he's felt said daggers plunging into his liver and intestines multiple times for the ache to be there long after the blade has been withdrawn.
He's mastered the give-and-tell, but Azalea beats him to the punch.
"Isn't it obvious?" she buts in, Conrad clucking his tongue at being cut off. Marlon looks back at Azalea with a frown, whose animosity has leveled out into a state of indifference. "Look at his hands," she nods, towards Conrad's hands clenching his cutlery.
"What about them?" Marlon asks, as Conrad examines his skin. It's nothing out of the ordinary, with his dark skin tone, chaffed knuckles, his palms a tad bit rougher than the average person's. His looks were a reason District 11 finds him admirable, and gives him a place in the workforce, but now, with how the days have turned out, and the way the sun has set on Conrad's back versus the front, perhaps he'd go back and tweak a few things.
"They're chaffed on the palms and the corners of his fingers," Azalea takes a sip of her drink, a hot pink concoction that smells of ivory and pearls. "He's a-"
"I'm a Peacekeeper," Conrad says, interrupting her, resisting the urge to smirk as he watches a fire burn in Azalea's eyes. "Well, I was," he says, "But…"
"You are," Azalea insists, leaning forward in her seat, tightening the grip on her knife again. Conrad's body tenses, prepared to leap from his chair and over the table to knock her into the ground. "I saw you and the guys last night at The Garden. You weren't in uniform, but you were with them…"
Conrad narrows his gaze, going silent. How would she know where he had been the night before? She's dead on the money, where some of the guys from his shift suggest getting a few beers for having to deal with the drama that'll come in the morning of the reaping. It isn't his scene, going out and partying, but they've extended him a hand, and he is not one to refuse an offer.
It is cramped in the bar, Conrad's back tightly pressed into the cold counter, the chilled tile the only frigid item in the entire place. Sweat drips down his head, and into his drink, a fresh beer that is five degrees to warm, but he's not buying this round.
Conrad takes a heavy drink, waving goodnight to Elijah, the latest recruit who got lucky for the fourth night in a row, a stunningly beautiful girl attached to his arm, laughing, laughing, laughing. Conrad chokes on his sip when the girl makes eye contact with him, and the light in her eyes, the fake smile laughing at Elijah's joke vanishes.
She glares at Conrad with malice in her heart, and he feels it stab him, he nearly dropping his drink.
Conrad gets up from his seat, locking his jaw. "You work at The Garden? I saw you and Elijah leave last night," he stumbles over his words, his blood having run cold. "You're a-"
"I don't need you to say it aloud," Azalea waves him away with her hand, sniffing the air disdainfully. "I indulge myself every now and then, yes."
"Well, I hate to break it to you," he says, leaning forward, not minding how his elbows are currently dipping into his mashed potatoes, "But whatever you're angry at me for, it's not my problem. I don't work with the Peacekeepers anymore."
"Then why hang out with them at shitty bars?"
"I shouldn't have to explain myself to people," Conrad says, hiding his disgust under a swallow. She hates him, and she doesn't even know him. She has taken one look at him and has thrown him into a cesspool of villainy. "Especially not to you."
It is not Conrad's first idea, to go and be a Peacekeeper. Living with his parents, Delmar, and Tamara Culler, they're hard workers, those who put their nose to the grindstone and let the sweat pool into their eyes without complaining. He's meant to be the same way, which is why to support the family, Conrad drops out of school at sixteen to go work in the fields with his father.
He's been pulling oranges off of trees and weighing out lemons by the crate for a week when the first fire bomb hits, and his entire existence, like the trees that he cuts down after a deep freeze, is uprooted.
There is no need for workers in the crop fields when they're burning down to ash and cinders in his hands, pillars of blackened sand slipping through his fingers. Supplies are not needed in high demand when all of the fighting men are sent off to protect Eleven's borders, splits happening jaggedly down the battlefield when there are dissenters and anarchists wishing to rip free from the army… and all of it is on Conrad's front door.
The Peacekeepers lose members by the dozen, whether they be Capitolites who are drawn back to the Capitol to defend their real homes, as Thirteen and Two's forces were burning down a different armory by each full moon, or men who simply didn't care… vacancies begin to pop up everywhere, and when one bursts, its magmatic rage and effects can be felt for miles.
Conrad signs up for the Peacekeepers against his father's wishes, to his absolute dismay, but he feels the instinctual need deep down to protect and serve, which is what he does. Crime in Conrad's neighborhood begins to sink; robberies are no longer frequent, there is a lot less thievery and a lot of the violence that the rebellion has consumed Panem with seems to bleed elsewhere in the district, nearly out of sight, out of mind.
It is a position Conrad settles into, being a Peacekeeper, liking it enough that he decides to continue with it even when the Hunger Games are announced, and his very future is on the line. That is how the headshakes start, and the notes left on his doorstep, which only anger Delmar worse and worse with each passing family dinner.
"They're going to kill you," his father says to him, one evening, shucking corn out of the cob and into the basin between them. Conrad goes to protest, as the statement is absolutely ludicrous – all the Peacekeepers still enrolled received a fresh bonus from work just yesterday, they wouldn't dare! – but his father slams the knife down on the cutting board with extra force. "They might not do it today, but one day, when you least expect it, they'll put a gun between your eyes and just," his father likens the motion, pressing his pointer finger against Conrad's eyes, thumping him. "You're just another number to them, Conrad."
"You're wrong, Dad," Conrad says, but he doesn't believe the words that come from his mouth.
"Conrad, you helped prevent District 11 from burning down to the ground, and you still had to go to the reaping last year," Delmar scolds. "Don't tell me what I am right and wrong about here."
He holds onto that feeling for a few more months, until…
Conrad squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block the image of the little girl tugging at the sleeve of his uniform, her mother with fresh tears painted down her face begging for a semblance of mercy. He refuses, and yet still-
"Why Elijah?" Conrad asks Azalea, disrupting the memory. He nearly blushes at the fact that he's been standing in the dining car without moving a muscle or uttering another word for the last few minutes. He notices that Marlon has vanished from the car, leaving Azalea to finish her dinner, while his own lays still half uneaten by his placemat.
Azalea pauses, toothpick in hand as she uses a fork to act as her mirror. "What?" she asks.
"Why Elijah?" Conrad tilts his head to the side. "He wasn't exactly the most handsome guy in the group last night," he says. He almost opens with a "And there's me to choose from," but between the stare she sent him last night, and the look he's being sent for simply talking to her, Conrad knows that will never be in the cards. "He never showed up for his shift this morning, I'm told. You two have such a good time he just decided to sleep in?"
His district partner purses her lips, pausing as she goes to wipe off her mouth with a napkin. "You could say something to that effect, sure." Azalea scoots her chair back, scratching at the back of her scalp.
Conrad stills in his spot over by the entrance to the corridor. He and his other Peacekeeper friends visit The Garden a lot, and while he is underage and usually not one for breaking the rules, there are nights when a good beer and a terrible burger satisfies him in a way his mother's cooking couldn't.
He's been out of the force for two weeks, and in those two weeks, as he has a few friends still employed in the service, that there have been empty shifts happening for weeks, and the first odd inclusion is just a few days before Conrad hangs up the coat and the leather gloves.
He narrows his gaze on his district partner. "Why do I get the feeling there is something you aren't telling me?" Azalea's stares that he's received are malice-filled, but there's an anger even beyond that. When Conrad receives the yells and screams in his face by the hundreds at how he's a traitor, even the ones with the highest amount of anger do not harbor the same sort of hatred that Azalea radiates off in waves.
A hatred that is fiery enough to kill.
To murder.
"There isn't…" Azalea says after an awkward pause, as she pushes her chair in. "We had a good time last night, he was kind of boring, he told me about how he slept with this girl the night before named Tulip, and then I…" Azalea's voice trails off, her demeanor flipping on a dime, Conrad rising his brow for the second time that dinner. Her calm, confident, cooled anger switches into a demurred sense of secrecy, Azalea biting her tongue.
"Azalea…" Conrad whispers, voice going dangerously low to where the Avoxes positioned in the corners of the dining car cannot hear him, not even the blinking cameras he sees go off every few seconds in the alcoves. "Azalea, what is it you aren't telling me? Why do you hate Peacekeepers so much?"
His district partner pauses, mouth open, a jarring sort of stutter spilling from her throat. The glazed look in her eye returns to the vengeful sort, Azalea scowling hard, stalking over towards him.
"How about a…" she holds for emphasis, searching for the right words. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
Then, as Conrad only sees it happening before it is too late, when he wishes Marlon would return to the room, does Azalea Oleander wind up a pitch.
He hardly has a moment to step out of the way when Azalea's fist collides into his face, sprawling him flat.
Veryn Alenti: District 5 Female P.O.V (18)
Even now, with the pieces of the only world Veryn Alenti has ever known left behind her at a hundred miles a minute, she's yet to regret her actions. Volunteering is reckless, rash, perhaps even hopeless, but in her soul, she knew, it is the only way to get what she wants.
Veryn Alenti sits in the parlor car of the District Five train, trailing a lock of hair around her fingers, squeezing out the knots, smoothing out the wrinkles. Her triumphant words still ring in her ears, an imperceptible shout of courage, and faith, her "I volunteer," a cry that will not go unheard. People have seen, and they will take note.
All of her actions have led to this point, this single sense of desperation, for she no longer knows where to turn. She did not expect it to be this, the Hunger Games, ripping out the hearts of children who did not fight – not like she did, with her mind and her soul and her lover – in the war that has placed them where they are. She just prays it'll be enough.
"It will be," Veryn says aloud, tightening the yoke on her hair, enough pain to seep out the residual uncertainty tainting her tongue. "It has to be."
She was born from nothing, a family that is destitute in everything but the spirit to rebel, where the flames of the righteous are what keeps her warm at night, when the blankets fail, and the fireplaces are void of kindling. It is a self-sustaining fire, one that Veryn does not have to build herself, as it is Panem that she lives in, evil ripe and abound for the picking; it is a plentiful harvest for her by simply opening her eyes and breathing.
There is no other way for her to exist, without fighting back, without digging her heels into the sand and gritting her teeth. The insistent push, the pushing, and the aching, reaching the summit where her hands are just barely out of reach of the rock's edge. There used to be someone on the other end, at the peak, to leap out and seize her hand. There used to be… a lot of people at the top of every mountain to help her, actually.
Veryn bites on her lip, disrupting the memory. It's been approximately seven hours and three minutes since the last time she's thought of Jasione Byun. Her ex-lover's name is in her head as she raised her hand to volunteer, but the thoughts of her are eradicated when her district partner, Velimir Novotny, is reaped instead, carrying his child onto the stage with him.
Even as Callan came to say goodbye to her, hugging her tight, begging that she rescind her decision – he can't lose anyone else, god, he can't lose anyone else… why does he have to lose his sister too? – Veryn is incapable of taking her mind off of the young man who has his very own child ripped out of his hands.
She has been there before, losing those she loves without getting a chance to kiss them goodbye, never being able to say how she feels. Long lost words floating in the air, syllables choking on the smog in the sky, for Panem's very foundations are hazardous. Sulfur and despair, speckles of misery landing in Veryn's windpipe.
All those words, and Veryn still feels like she has so much more to say.
Someone enters the parlor car at that instance, Veryn letting go of her hair as the sounds of patted footsteps approach her.
She looks up at her district partner, Velimir, standing over in the corner of the room, digging his fingernails into his skull. His eyes are rimmed red with fresh tears, a lone one slipping down his cheek, he hastily scrubbing it away with the back of his hand.
The TV is on in the center of the room, two Capitolite spokespersons that Veryn does not recognize taking up the screen. "Are you okay?" she asks him, sitting up straight, resting the small of her back on the cushion. The volume is all the way down, for she doesn't care what these two perfumed pounces have to say, and it still is louder than the non-committal muttering that Velimir speaks.
Velimir sniffles, fixing his slumped posture. "I'm fine," he gets out, and then nods at the couch. "Can I sit?"
Veryn perks up, her facial expression softening. "Of course! Please, by all means," she exclaims, scooting over, even though there is plenty of room for him. He dutifully takes a seat next to him, Veryn careful to keep her gaze off of him as much as possible. There are no words which can describe the enmity she feels towards the Peacekeepers who rip his baby out of his hands, violating the sacred trust between a father and their child. Pity floods her heart, but by Velimir's demure expression, the light lost in his eyes, that must be the last thing he needs from her. "You can change it to something you want to watch."
"I'd rather sit in silence," Velimir says, meeting Veryn's eyes. Sadness permeates her to the core, another flutter of her heart ricocheting around the parlor car. He's a man who has suffered loss firsthand, from how his hands twist, how his fingers seize at his clothing, desperate to hold something tangible before it slips out of his hand. She knows, she's lived it too.
"I can understand that," she nods her head. "We don't really have to talk."
Talking. Not one of Veryn's gifts, which she's eternally grateful for. Her gifts lay in actions, in doing things for others, in being useful and changing the world. It all mattered in the end when someone's day had been changed for the better, all the while by her hand.
A foul thought crosses her mind, Veryn biting down on her tongue to stifle the outward retort waiting to combat it. Velimir tucks his knees to his chest, reaching for the remote by his righthand side on the couch, slowly starting to flip through the Capitol ordained channels.
Every life Veryn has touched with her hands, intent on saving them, she's changed for the worse. Lives lost, homes destroyed, too many funerals for children who are too young to be orphans. Families torn apart, and for all the fighting Veryn attempts, all the pursuals of long lost sheep she wished to find… none of it matters, as her final act in this slew of good ends with her volunteering for the system she swore to annihilate.
She destroyed Jasione's life, even if she refuses to admit it. If she doesn't make it back, Callan will never forgive her, even as he'd stand over her grave, another ruined life.
Or her mother, who-
"You want to put it on the reaping?" Veryn suggests. "Just to see who we may be going up against?" At Velimir's expression, which is one of bridged eyebrows and a near-look of insanity, she softens her tone. "We can skip Five's, it's okay,"
"I don't see why not," Velimir says, hitting the 'Guide' button on the remote. A channel is listed as 'Reaping Discussion' – "Convenient," she mutters to herself," – which is what her district partner floats the cursor over to.
Veryn shifts her seat on the couch, letting her legs fall out onto the floor. Her body is cramped with exhaustion, tension settling in the joints that releases whenever she exhales a heavy sigh. Day-in, day-out, Veryn Alenti is on the go, without a rhyme or a reason to stop, for there are people demanding a lot out of her every second of the day, and if she were to pause even once, like a house of cards would it crumble to pieces in her hands.
No one is demanding more out of her than herself, however, but she refuses to acknowledge that.
She began fighting the Capitol and their indecency at the age of eight. Although the rebellion had not happened, and it wouldn't begin till Veryn is fifteen, there were many ways to rebel. Unjust and cruel taxation, Peacekeeper whippings by the day on those who did not deserve any sort of punishment, and other sorts of vile policy that make Veryn's skin crawl is just the tip of the iceberg.
"That guy gives me the creeps," Velimir says, nodding his head towards the man Dorian Argenti, who came from One. Veryn agrees, looking at the young man who is reaped, laughing at his fate, before making a finger-wave towards the camera.
Jasione Byun is an accident in her life, someone she never expected to meet, but over the course of a few years – a few weeks, truthfully, but Veryn only admits that in her moments of complete loneliness – it is her, the girl whose vengeance could rip an oak tree free from the ground. It is that girl, whose violence would by all means be reprehensible, that Veryn fights for.
Fighting for still, if she can manage to make it to the end of the Games in two weeks.
"Someone else volunteered," Velimir comments, towards a Desdemona Farsiris out of District Two. Veryn's arms erupt in goosebumps at the look of the person to join the blue-haired escort on stage, for if Velimir looks like a man who is doused in sadness like one is drenched in gasoline, Desdemona Farsiris bathes in it.
Veryn looks away from the screen, going back to loosely slipping her hands through her hair, when out of the blue, she gasps.
"No!" she exclaims at the top of her lungs, leaping to her feet.
"Fuck!" Velimir shouts, startled out of his wits on his spot on the couch. "What, Veryn?"
No. It is impossible. That cannot be. It cannot be.
She's dead. She died, Veryn knows this. It cannot be. There must be a mistake, someone knowing that she's watching the reaping recap footage, someone playing a joke on her. Someone in the Capitol recording studio has to see the live feeds coming from each train, someone who is aware of who she is, wanting to do yet again another cruel, cruel joke.
Veryn inches closer and closer to the TV, reaching her hands out at the sight of her lover, at the sight of a very alive and well Jasione Byun, that very girl manhandled onto the stage at District Three's reaping.
"Jasi…" Veryn whispers, eyes wide. "No…" she shakes her head, unable to believe what she's witnessing. "What are you doing here? What are you doing alive?"
Veryn Alenti is not from District Five. Her family hailed from Three, minds meant for computation and wizardry with computers, intelligence that snakes down synapses into her blood, where Veryn traded in a calculator for a pistol. Her efforts fighting the Capitol are with Three's resistance, where she crossed paths with Jasione Byun, where her actions turn from rational to irrational.
The loyalists, rich Capitol dogs who believe they're this close to popping Three's resistance like a grape with their manacles of corruption and smothering power smoke Veryn out, and when the haze cleared, negotiations that go south and fumble, all that Veryn has left to grab is ash.
Her father, killed. Her mother, gone. Jasione left for dead, and the loyalists had managed to slip the wool over Veryn's eyes, for she had gotten close, she trusted them, and with her mistakes in hand, Veryn and Callan fled to Five.
She's believed all this time that she's alone, that it is her and her brother, fighting and doing everything she can in her power to bring her mother home. All this time believing that Jasione Byun, the only woman she's ever loved, is gone.
And yet, now, she's alive, staring at the camera – therefore, staring at her – with the glare that could rival that of the vice president's. Going into the Hunger Games, where Veryn is going, the same problem that she launches herself into, because Veryn believes it may be what solves all of her own issues.
"No…" Veryn repeats, sinking to her knees in front of the TV screen. "Velimir, turn it off," she says, looking back at him. The showing has moved on, now in District Six, with Veryn staring off at the pixels without uttering a sound. Her district partner is frozen on the couch, still looking at her. "Turn it off!" she roars at him, that feeling of pity about he and his child evaporating in an instant.
The picture vanishes immediately, Velimir scrambling for the remote, but the image of a reaped Jasione Byun is seared into her memory. The last Veryn sees, before fleeing, before the botched exchange of lives, is her lover knocked into the ground, a head wound leaking copper all over the soil… who would've saved her? Who would've left Jasione there to bleed out and die?
Better yet, as Veryn begins to cry, tears streaming down her face, wetting the spot of carpet beneath her knees… why didn't Jasione try and find her? Why did she stay in Three, then? What compelled her to stay behind, to let Veryn go this long thinking she had died?
"Why?" Veryn begs out to the universe. "Why?" she screams.
"Veryn…" Velimir can be heard from the couch, the squeaking of leather as he stands up from his spot. "Who was that in District Three?"
Her throat burns with a sob that is desperate to unleash, but it is blocked by Veryn's immense disbelief. Her life is lost the first few months when it is just her and Callan in Five, looking for a place to live, places to eat; the Alenti siblings needed money in a world where their services are viewed as a detriment versus that of a boon.
When the war is lost, and the dust settled, and the Hunger Games finalized, it had been the perfect moment for Veryn to give up and admit she's failed, but that is not Veryn Alenti.
Veryn Alenti fights the good fight until there is no more war to be had, and it is the belief that she lost Jasione that fueled the fire just so.
Velimir shifts off of the couch, crossing over to her in a few strides, and without saying a word, simply presses his head against Veryn's. Without her permission, though she is happy that he does it without her having to ask, he wraps an arm around her.
"It'll be okay," he says.
"How can you say that?" Veryn thinks to herself, not daring to speak the words aloud. How can the young man who has lost his child, and could very well never see her again be the one to tell her it'll be okay? "Did you just have your lover that you thought was dead just resurrect back to life?"
Veryn trembles in her district partner's hands, as the words, "I volunteer," in her head break down, the triumph in them being washed out to sea by a stinging, bitter wave of regret.
She curls in up on herself even more, knees fully tucked under her body, and with one expelling push of air from her lungs, Veryn Alenti unleashes a bloodcurdling scream.
Tauren Anatole: District 3 Male P.O.V (18)
Even with all his years of medical experience in hand, Tauren Anatole has always felt ill-equipped to deal with one particular subset of injuries. The injury of the broken heart is one he's never understood, and as he listens to the whimpers and the cries of his district partner, Jasione Byun, who has cooped herself in her room after fainting watching the live coverage of the reapings, the lack of study rears back and punches him in the face.
Everything had been going smoothly, as he understands it, the two of them getting along amicably enough, Jasione's temper settling down once the Peacekeepers unhand her and leave her alone. Tauren is incapable of taking his eyes off of the massive bruise that has formed in the center of her head, and while she seems unperturbed by it, his eyes hone onto the injury like a beacon. He cannot resist asking to take a look at it.
Tauren lightly raps the door with his knuckles. "You okay, Jasione? Want me to bring you a glass of water?"
"Go away, please!" his district partner begs on the other side, a bit of her rage peeking through. "Can't you obviously hear how much distress I am in?"
"But-" Tauren goes to object.
"Go away!" Jasione roars, he leeching away from the door, stumbling fast and hard enough to trip over a lump in the carpet. Tauren cries out weakly, smacking the back of his head against the windowsill.
He stays there, clutching his head wound with one hand, keeping his eyes on the door. He can hear Jasione pacing inside, her breathing erratic, her whispers faster still. Veryn Alenti, the name of the girl that causes Jasione, sitting right next to him on the couch, to drop like a sack of bricks onto the floor. When she awoke, with a scream that scares the absolute shit out of him, she slapped his hand away and raced off towards her room, which has been this consistent battle for the last fifteen minutes.
It is unlike him, to be this kind, to offer a complete stranger – who is rude to him just twelve hours ago, no less – any sort of help when they do not have a massive side of their body missing, oozing blood out onto the clinic floor. Yet Tauren goes to approach the door once more, and as he goes to knock, it swings open, the door grazing the tip of his left shoe.
Jasione is standing in the doorway, her face puffy and splotchy, her breathing raspy. "I'll take a vodka, instead," she says, resolutely, after a moment, breathing in and out, Tauren matching her pace.
He quips an eyebrow, a smirk resting on his face. "I believe that can be arranged," Tauren laughs, stepping back for Jasione to make her way back into the train's hallway. Jasione wipes away at her tears, the two step for step towards the dining car. Inside, it is empty, save for two Avoxes that occupy the corners, but he nor Jasione pay them any mind.
She helps herself to the bar, as Tauren goes and takes a seat, resting his elbows on the cool countertop. He watches Jasione, looking at her face and how underneath the demeanor of complacency, he senses her rage that bubbles between the brow, festering into her frown lines like rows of magma conduits versus that of soil. He's similar to her, stoic in that way.
A bloodied hand clutching onto his doctor scrubs, staining the aquamarine green clothing with crimson rivers that coalesce at the heels of his shoes. An organ, indescribable in its state, sliding out of his hands, as Tauren cannot put bodies back together again like they're puzzles once they've been solidly ripped apart.
They were complacent, they were dormant! The Anatole family were dormant, and they're punished, and he's watching as his mother and father die-
"Here you go," Jasione says, nudging a glass of vodka against his shoulder.
Tauren accepts it graciously enough, stuttering a harsh cough under his tongue. "Th- thank you," he smiles, nursing it close to his chest. Jasione takes one look at the bottle, and the other glass in her hand, before settling the glass down back underneath the corner, swigging straight from the bottle instead. Tauren wrinkles his nose at the sight, thinking of the amount of germs that she must've come into contact with, but he holds his tongue.
He's spent a lifetime, eighteen busy years, being someone who is indifferent to the world around him. Not caring one way or another, that is the Anatole way, a reed standing strong in the storm regardless of the winds that blow its way, unable to be ripped out of the ground. No longer, he suspects, now that he is here. It is a nagging thought, when he's standing there in the reaping pens, like the year before, that he could be sniffed out by the Capitol and sent to his death, but Jasper Overheart's reaping last year disabused him of the notion.
"They want people with real goals of rebellion," Tauren tells his sister one sweltering summer evening, Aurelia Anatole, as they stick together through the thick and thin. "Not us, not those who helped both sides on the sidelines."
"If that's the case, Tauren, then why are Mom and Dad-"
"A fluke," he interrupts her, looking at her with a solid stare to shut her up. His sister is always speaking out of place.
He had been wrong then, and he's wrong now, as he takes a long sip of the vodka, letting the burn in his throat replace the bitterness in his soul. Jasione takes one long swig, leaning back against the wall while the contents bubble and flow downward.
Against his better judgement, "Careful!" he exclaims, entirely out of character, as Jasione sputters, drinking too fast and far too much at once, for some of it splashes her in the face and dribbles down onto the counter.
The avox closest to them in the right side of the bar car makes their way over to the counter, a roll of napkins seemingly appearing out of thin air, but Jasione waves them away with one single look. "I don't need you guys to do everything when something goes wrong," she scolds them, Tauren resting the chilled rim of his glass against his lips, watching. It isn't his fight, it isn't his place, and she isn't under his scrutiny. "I can clean it up myself," Jasione reaches for a napkin, wiping up what she spilled.
Tauren finishes his glass, handing it back to Jasione without a word for a refill. She raises her brow, smirking, and gives him one. "I saw the way you looked at me when I drank from the bottle," and then, as he cannot believe it, Jasione Byun giggles. "It's okay, you can tell me if you thought it was gross."
"It was gross, Jasione."
"Ever the charmer, are you?" she grins at him, full of teeth.
Tauren Anatole's line of work does not rely on him being charming, it relied on him being consistent, and without fail. The Anatole family – Hadriana, Claudius, Aurelia, Mila, and himself – are a family of healers, with two daughters and a son to carry on the caduceus legacy, to heal those who come with their broken bodies, expecting to be stitched back together. How could healing be considered something that takes sides in a war?
If an injured Peacekeeper showed up on their clinic steps with a bullet hole through their trachea, it was mended. If a rebel, with half of their leg blown off hours ago via a misplaced mortar, were placed in their care, they took the leg. It is his purpose, his placement in Panem, to heal, and the nation would never survive if every one of its injured inhabitants simply died out.
His first lesson in this world had not been one of how to tie a bandage to a leg, or how to properly administer dosages of morphine. It is how indifference kills, how indifference plagues the world as Tauren would come to understand it.
His father, Claudius, finishes cooking dinner, smearing a stick of butter over the loaf of bread sitting and smoking in the basket between he and his children. Tauren, seven years-old at the time, sees his first dead body, the thought making him gag, at how chicken wing bones felt similar to the tibia in his hands as they examine the cadaver for burial.
Hadriana, his mother, is the one who leads the trash can up to Tauren's side so he can vomit into it, as he watches Aurelia, five years older than him, take charge, able to finish the routine with his parents without issue.
"Neutrality and indifference are unacceptable," Claudius remarks, as they settle down to eat, before he pushes the silverware close to them all. "If you don't stand for something, you fail everything you care about."
His sister, Mila, a few years older than him, doesn't take her eyes off of their father the entire meal, as his words said one thing, but meant another. Pro-Capitol, pro-resistance. "And what if it is the direction other than what you want?" she ventures, only to be glared at.
It should be no surprise to Tauren that when the rebellion broke out, the nation in chaos, that Mila goes fighting for the rebels, vacating the Anatole house without a second thought to save the lives of those wishing to bring the Capitol to its knees. He's buried her, with choked sobs stuck in his throat, as Aurelia told him it would happen sooner or later… someone would root them out.
His parents, at first, chose the side of the rebels, where the Anatole clinic on the outskirts of District Three, would harbor those who needed a place for the night, or somewhere to rest from an injury that would take more skill to heal than the Anatole family could provide. Tauren knew it was dangerous, their actions, considered reprehensible and illegal by the state, traitorous even… traitors received no mercy, and Tauren didn't have the healing skill to reapply his detached head back to his neck if it were to be severed from his shoulders.
Something changed, however, when his mother, Hadriana, carried a Peacekeeper in one night on a stretcher, and instead of rebel generals, Capitol officials… lapdogs who served Panem first, they filled the hallways, versus the legions of injured soldiers that put the Anatole clinic at capacity. It was around that time when Mila died, with a letter from District Three's rebellion detailing the details of her demise – firing squad – but he never once saw his parents openly weep.
Even being a turncoat didn't save his parents from their fates in the end, it didn't save Tauren from holding their broken bodies in his hands.
There are a thousand and one questions lingering in Tauren's mind, and he'll never get the chance to ask them. Not to the living, at the very least.
"Hey," Jasione nudges Tauren again, this time by pelting him with an olive square in the forehead. He blinks the obtrusion away, smearing a splash of olive juice over his brow. "Don't be a terrible drinking buddy. If you're not gonna drink the vodka, at least let me have it."
"Sorry," he says, downing the glass in one quick motion, the scorching liquid fuel to his vocal cords. Being reaped today is a shock, but not an unexpected one, and from how Jasione had been sent on stage in a less than dignified manner, he expects it for her too. "Just thinking about home."
Jasione leans back against the counter, a few bottles rattling from the sudden movement, and Tauren senses the Avoxes on the sides of the car tense. It is a saddening implication, their desire to rush forward and save any sort of situation from going south, as it is on their shoulders should something break, he figures. There's no way for him to save them from their fates, to give them prosthetic tongues and allow them to speak again. If it were in his power, he would, but he knows it isn't possible.
His district partner purses her lips at him. "What's your last name again?"
"Anatole," he says. "I'm not rich or anything," which is the truth, but the less he says about himself, the better. The Capitol knew enough, which had been hardly anything, as his parents were always guarded, and even then-
"It's not good to bottle things up, Tauren," Aurelia whispers to him one evening, long ago now, after they've buried their parents, and they're the last ones alive. Tauren has nowhere to turn to, and his best friend Xander Hofstead props him up instead, with grins and compliments and being the one to cry on command when necessary. "Eventually you're going to break."
"I haven't yet," is his retort, but Tauren feels bad for snapping at his sister the moment her face darkens, and she hadn't returned his calls since then.
She did show up to say goodbye to Tauren, though, back at the reaping ceremony. Arms around his waist, crying, for she believed her brother to be a goner, and it just works wonders for Tauren's confidence.
Jasione stews over his name, taking another sip of vodka straight from the bottle. "Anatole…" she muses, Tauren scratching his nails into the counter, prepping for what she'll say. Everyone knew, at the end of the day, when the Capitol turned on them, for how they turned on Three, an open secret that the gutter rats spoke to each other as gossip around their barrel fires. "Didn't your family used to own a clinic in the backwater sections of Three?"
"We did," Tauren says pointedly, and he reaches across the bar for the vodka.
"What happened to it? You don't own it now, right?"
Tauren raises the bottle high, pouring, pouring, pouring and the glass is now overflowing, Jasione looking at him querulously as the vodka begins to spill out of the glass and onto the counter, and off the counter onto the floor. It starts splashing onto his shoes, starts splashing and soaking into the carpet, as Tauren lets the entire bottle, half of it to be precise, dunk out of it.
If Jasione can cry her demons away concerning a Veryn Alenti, who must be someone special in her life for her to faint, he can take the bar car's vodka. The Avoxes don't move, but Tauren's taken his eyes off of them.
He finishes pouring the rest of the bottle out, reaching out for the glass. The area around him is soaked, and stinks to high heaven of alcohol. "Ashes," he says, answering her question, looking at Jasione dead in the eye. "All that is left are ashes."
Tauren picks the glass up, it nearly slipping straight out of his hand and onto the floor, almost shattering, taking one long sip, careless about what gets on him or in the way.
"Nothing remains anymore," he says, with a sigh, slamming the glass down on the counter. When he gets up, the floor makes a squelching noise under his shoes, it being Jasione's turn to cringe at the sounds.
Tauren exits the dining car, and the semblances of sympathy he has any longer have been drowned out by his own sorrow.
Perhaps in his lifetime he should've remained indifferent to the world around him.
Ness Turner: District 8 Female P.O.V (18)
It seems rather ironic to eighteen-year-old Ness Turner that she doesn't view the world in just black or white, when it is Poem Cavalli's choice of apparel for the evening, their newfound mentor, and the first Hunger Games victor, walking around like a moving chessboard. All that is missing are the pieces. Ness narrows her gaze coolly at the girl, a year younger than her, taking her time grabbing sugar for her tea, acting like everything is carefree in the world.
It's been like this all day, actually, the moment Ness was whisked onto the stage by Damien, the same escort sitting on Sable's right across the dining room table. Poem, with a wide smile, greeting her once they're on the train, not a hair out of place, causing Ness's skin to crawl.
"We'll be in the Capitol by morning," Poem says, decisively clinking her spoon on the rim of the saucer. Each clunk is the sound of one of Ness's footsteps as she approached the stage, doom riding her heart, she trying to keep the panic down under the blue of her bloodstream on camera. "Around mid-afternoon you'll be released to go to the tribute center for the tribute parade," their mentor squeals slightly at the phrase, Ness rolling her eyes. "And it'll all end with a lovely soiree in the evening," she takes her seat on Damien's right. "Any questions?"
"One!" Sable exclaims, their eyes bright, expression joyous. Ness smiles faintly at the younger boy, who looks as if he is carefree in the world, without an inhibition to hold him down. Although Sable did burst into tears at the reaping, with good reason, ever since the car ride down to the station, it has been all smiles.
Ness is trying to do the same. Cameras are on them every waking moment, which Poem reminds them of at her first insistence, even before they step onto the train, capturing every detail they wish. Should any one of the tributes become a victor, all the footage is compiled into a reel.
"Do you have yours?" Ness asks, earlier, when they're settling in for lunch, tiny handmade sandwiches, and miniature cups of grape juice for Sable. "Your victory tape?"
Poem wrings her hands together, frown lines appearing on the corners of her skin. She is beautiful, flawless even, with the one wrinkle. "I-" she stutters, scratching the back of her head. "It's… somewhere."
Her head spins at the idea of the Capitol watching her every movement, at how her face does perk up when they get the first look at the train cars and all of its decadence. What will it see when she makes the first plunge of the dagger clenched in her right hand?
Ness chokes on air for a second, blushing under the intense stares that the rest of the table throw her way, reaching for her water to be her saving grace. Her life in District 8 had not been one spent with murder weapons: blades and guns that reave, rip, and take… her work was spent with an ink pen, a keyboard, and the gift of the gab.
Poem frowns, rubbing her thumb back and forth over her chin, smearing a swipe of makeup across her lower left cheekbone, before returning her attention to Sable. "What was your question?"
Sable swallows their bite of food. "Are you designing our costumes?"
"I sure hope not," Ness intones in her head, but Poem's response is a sweet smile and a laugh. Not that Ness decides to ever wake up and be vitriolic, but she's never appreciated Poem Cavalli's existence in District 8 as a new celebrity because of her win. There were people who volunteered for noble causes, and they did not get to return home… or the unfortunate souls, like herself, or Sable, who didn't even get a say. And yet, it is the one who made a mistake, who gets to return to the ringing of the bells. The situation is a shade of gray, and Ness faults her for it.
"No, I don't get to," Poem answers, her gaze downcast. "The stylists for the other districts weren't very pleased with me designing my own outfit last year," she looks over at Ness, "I'd offer it to you, but I think the fabric would swallow you whole."
Ness is happy she doesn't have to express her own pleasure at not having to wear the dress.
"Oh," Sable says, tone saddened, he withdrawing slightly away from his plate. "That's too bad, I love the colors you use."
It must be nice, Ness realizes with a pang of jealousy rippling through her heartbeat, that Sable and Poem have something to connect them to, while she goes without. Ness picks at the fine detailing of the napkin settled under her plate, letting the conversation ebb and flow as Sable, Poem, and Damien discuss the parade. Ness knows what it is, however, with the chariots and the grandeur that is spared at no expense for the tributes.
It is all propaganda, her specialty.
The footage that Ness sees on TV whenever there's a new special from the Capitol concerning the rebirth of Panem following the Dark Days followed one specific rule… it is what the rebels told her not to show in her own work. There is prosperity, highlighted by a young mother and her son racing through fields of grain in District 9, or the gorgeous glimmering blue of District 4's ocean crashing into the sandy shore.
What isn't shown is how that mother and son lost a younger sister, a grandfather, and a husband to the war, where the smoke clouded their home, or how District 4's sea used to be overrun with the sickening copper tint of spilled blood, seagulls and vultures alike picking at the carrion on the ground.
Ness was made to show the opposite, and no matter how many times she wrinkled her nose at the viscera displayed on screen, she performs her job, for there's no one else that can do what she does. Bodies laying in the street, orphans crying for their loved ones, tomb after tomb of dead soldiers lined up in a row… the dark skies, the firebombs, the pure evil that the Capitol rains down on the districts because they stood up for themselves.
The key is to make sure no one looks away, as Ness toiled with the graphics and the commercials, to put it blatantly in everyone's faces, even for those who denied it was happening as the sky tore open above their very own heads, that you couldn't run from it. The Capitol wishes to bury the past, and Ness is an archaeologist, with her shovel and a camera, unearthing one secret at a time.
Sometimes, when Ness glances over at Poem, she sees her doing it too, burying it like it never existed.
It's come up once, Niklaus's name – not Catalus's, for he wasn't from District 8, he didn't have the smokestack smog flooding his veins like everyone else's – over lunch, when an avox served Sable his lunch.
"Thank you," Sable says, taking the plate, as Ness seats herself more comfortably on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her. The avox bows their head and returns to their post. As Sable starts biting into the crust of the sandwich first, they pause, as Damien is staring at him. "What?"
"It's always nice to see tributes thank the servants," Damien says, the tone causing Ness to bristle slightly in her chair.
"It'd be nice if there were no servants to be had," Ness comments, off-handedly, yet pointedly enough towards the escort. The man has ruined her life, she can afford to spare the niceties. "I could get my own sandwich if I wanted to," yet she stays seated.
Damien purses his lips, overlooking her comment, speaking to Sable again. "Niklaus was always polite to the Avoxes, so I am glad you do the same."
Poem, who is sitting near the bar, writing something down on a sheet of paper – instructions, perhaps – freezes, and the audible sound of the tip of the pencil snapping fills the dining car.
Poem experiences the Hunger Games, and she gets to forget… Ness wishes it were that simple.
Her parents had never been one for the rebel lifestyle, but they were not fervent Capitol supporters either. Though they were born in District 8, where their minds were not set for the sweatshops and the needle and the thread, the Turner family had their sights set on District 5. Industry and power felt as if it flowed through their veins, brilliance deducted from numbers and equations, versus Ness being given a weft of loom and told to pull off a Cavalli specialty.
Though Ness does not have the mind for numbers like her parents did, opting to be foremen and executives who could at the very least use them, she found her strength in the written word, in the picturesque. When the war began, Ness's essays began to turn from idyllic fairytales into grisly details of battle reports, of troop movements allayed on the radio, and other sorts of dealings with the Dark Days… her talent became a profession, her purposeless life became fulfilled.
"So, stepping away from the parade for a minute," Poem says, wiping at her lips with her napkin, "I wanted to start talking strategy some for the Games." The atmosphere of the table dies in an instant, and as if on cue, the candle in the middle of their four plates extinguishes away. Ness and Sable make eye contact from across the table. "I was graciously told by one of the Gamemakers, Nyria Kirchner, that it is not the Capitol's interest to use the same arena as the year before, which means that everything you go into will be entirely new. My experience will not be yours, let alone of course with the other tributes."
Ah. The others. Ness shivers at the wording, for a few hours ago they had gathered in the parlor car to watch the reaping recap. A lot of older kids, all her age, taking the stage, and it takes all of Ness's own willpower to not freak out, looking at the competition. Sable is a sweet kid, from the few hours they've spent together, but if she's being freaked out, she can only imagine what is running through their head when everyone, like the boys from One and Two, or the girls from Six and Twelve are all taller than her.
There isn't much Ness can do on her own, physically, but it doesn't mean she's counting herself out of the game on that principle. Poem, even with her ditzy mannerisms and her foolishness in volunteering, won with the help of allies. Though it is true that she felled Vesuvia Vocanova in the very end when push came to shove – "She almost died," Ness reminds herself – the girl, their mentor, did not make it to the end alone. She had allies, Niklaus and Catalus, to help her up, to save her skin when it had been needed.
If Ness is going to do this, she can't go alone. There looked to be many great candidates on stage, from watching the recap, from heroes to villains, to everyone in between, Ness trying to placate them on her gray scale in terms of where they'd fall.
It doesn't matter in the end of the day about brute strength, but the mind… can you manipulate someone long enough to be your patsy, before shoving them into the fire? Can you string along a retinue of bodyguards to keep you safe until you can claim the victory out from underneath them?
Ness prides herself on her nature, on her personality, where she doesn't have a mean bone in her body that she exhibits willingly. She'll never insult someone to their face to be hurtful or dare trip them up by sticking her leg out in front of them. When she looks at Sable, she cannot picture his body broken on the floor in front of her, her own weapon sticking out of their chest. Despite that, however, Ness is self-preserving.
"Of course, it is impossible to tell what everyone is going to be like just by seeing a thirty second clip of them," Poem says, taking a bite of her risotto, "And last year I didn't even watch the recap cause of my delusions…" she shakes her head, frowning. "Regardless, the Games are not meant to be taken alone," their mentor leans back in her chair. "Niklaus and I allied together purely because we wandered into each other's arms at the end. You and Sable don't have to ally together purely on principle, and you saw plenty of others last year who didn't end up with their district partners either," she folds her hands on her lap. "Do you want to ally together?"
Sable and Ness lock eyes again across the table's finery, she catching his reflection in her overturned fork on her plate. Ness bites down on her lip, staring at her district partner in the face. When he's reaped, she noticed that the tips of their fingers are stained a bright blue, almost navy color. She asked him, to see that he had painted a flower on the cheek of a young girl his age who had been too scared to stand upright while waiting in line for processing.
A good natured soul, Ness laments, too good for the Hunger Games, and a soul that will be slaughtered. Calen Kinegrove, from District 10, a warm soul, killed in moments, for standing up against those he opposed… would Sable Faru suffer the same fate?
Ness doesn't need nice, not here in the arena, likewise she didn't need niceties in the Dark Days, propagating the rebel war machine. She needs someone reliable, she needs someone she can count on, and while she'll appreciate Sable's company on the nights leading up to the Games when the rooms have fallen silent, she can't trust him. She can't trust him, not in the way she requires it.
"I'd prefer to find allies on my own," Ness says resolutely, sitting upright. Sable's expression hardly flickers, though their lips do curve downwards. "I'm sorry," she apologizes. "I'm sure you'll find someone, though."
Poem nods her head, though she doesn't say anything at first. "Anyone you have in mind?" the victor asks, giving the air a chance to settle over the table.
Ness rubs the back of her neck. "I am sure I'll find someone."
She already has, as the recap finishes, and Ness has taken every mental note she can filed in her head. She needs someone with a strong sense of self, someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to live, but by having allies, keeping them alive will only further themselves as well.
The moment Astra Enoshima from District 6 is reaped, Ness Turner knows, like all the times she's made a masterpiece of propaganda to flood Panem's airwaves.
While Ness Turner may not be able to trust Astra Enoshima with her life, she'll trust the girl to get her all the way to the end, and that is where it matters.
After that, Ness hopes her plan has been enough, lest it all end with a knife in her gut.
Alrighty! There we have it folks, Chapter #10: Creators of Compassion, the fifth set of intros, and the second of three concerning the train rides. I hope you liked getting to meet Conrad Culler (D11M by Reign of Winter), Veryn Alenti (D5F by ladyqueerfoot), Tauren Anatole (D3M by daydreamer26), and Ness Turner (D8F by LiveFreeOrDie). We've got just one more stop left on this party train to get to the pre-games, which I am very excited about, and can't wait, as I announced a few days ago that I have every finite detail of Declaration of Death planned out. Now I just get to write it! :D
The last intro chapter, if you haven't gotten to do it via process of elimination, will have you all meet, as these kiddos arrive to the Capitol, will be: Harquinne Villoria (D1F), Ridley Lifeson (D6M), Anais Denali (D10F), and Narcissus Wylder (D7M). Like Liberty's last intro, there will be a Capitol pov tacked onto the end of the chapter to accelerate some other moments in that storyline, and that'll be from Richmond's pov at the end once the other four intros are completed. Of course, your thoughts on the chapter will be greatly appreciated. I love you guys so much! Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm